Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Thomas Edison, Eclipse Chaser!

Episode Date: June 21, 2017

Former NPR science reporter David Baron discusses the stories of men and women who made their way across the American West to view and document the total solar eclipse of 1878.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thomas Edison, Eclipse Chaser, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. A lot to share with you this week as we explore the great North American eclipse. Not the one coming in August, The one that enticed American scientists and that famous inventor to the Wild West of 1878. David Barron tells the tale

in his terrific new book, American Eclipse. We'll visit Russia, China, Europe, and the UK with Bill Nye. There's space news from each of those. And when Bruce Betts joins us, we will unveil the brand new Planetary Radio t-shirt that one of you will win in the space trivia contest.

Does it get any better? Why, yes, it does. Because here is Planetary Society Senior Editor Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, you had much to report, as always, in your June 13 update on the Curiosity mission, Mars Science Laboratory. They can be found at planetary.org, of course. We are headed toward Vera Rubin Ridge. I love the renaming of that ridge, formerly Hematite Ridge,

after the great astronomer who just passed away in December. Why is this such an exciting target for Curiosity? Hematite Ridge, now known as Vera Rubin Ridge by the team. I do want to mention that that's not a formal name. It's just an informal one that the team refers to landmarks by. It is one of the features that was visible from space as seen by a spectrometer and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to show signs of water-related minerals in the rocks. Now, Curiosity has actually passed by and even drilled into many rocks that have shown signs of being affected by liquid water, either forming in liquid water or having groundwater percolate through them later.

But this is going to be the first one that was obvious from space. So it's going to be exciting to drive up onto the ridge and sample it because they do have to get up to the top of it in order to test and see what kinds of water-related minerals are there. But what they're really excited to do is get beyond it to this area behind the ridge where there are clay-type minerals that should be some really interesting geochemistry. And I guess the mission slogan at the moment, and really for the foreseeable future, is up or upward. Absolutely. In fact, the mission has really been driving upward ever since beginning to cross the dunes. It's really going to be fairly monotonic, going up in elevation, which means also up through Mars' history. As always, you've included lots of terrific images, one that is particularly striking.

As always, you've included lots of terrific images, one that is particularly striking. That same team, the Curiosity team, has called unofficially Dyke Peak. And you describe its geology as weird, but weird geometry. And I know what you mean looking at it. It's really hard when you first look at this thing to decipher. You are looking at a rock that seems to have like two intersecting bedding planes. And what we're actually looking at is a place where the rock fractured underground and minerals filled veins. And then now that the rock is above ground and being eroded, the veins are more resistant to erosion than the rest of the rock. And all of it is getting

wind blasted in this incredibly dry environment. So you have these ridiculous thin blades of rock that just, they really should not be there. You want to walk up to them and just tap it and you expect the whole rock to fall apart. But these kinds of cool wind eroded rocks have been around since Curiosity landed, but this is a particularly fine example. Yeah, I think of them as terraces for tiny Martians. The mission is not trouble-free. The problems with the drill continue. Any progress there? Unfortunately, no progress to report. The problem is a particular part of the drill feed mechanism. And in order for the rover to drill, the drill has to feed forward. And right now, they can't get that mechanism to work. And the drill is stuck up

behind its stabilizers. They can't even get the drill in contact with rock. And right now they can't get that mechanism to work and the drill is stuck up behind its stabilizers. They can't even get the drill in contact with rock. And it's such an intermittent and frustrating problem that it's just been really difficult to troubleshoot. They are making some progress in understanding the problem, but they aren't any closer to a solution if they're going to get to one. Well, let's hope that they find either a solution or some alternative, especially with all that great geology ahead. Finally, I want to mention that you include many of these mission updates from a terrific group of people, an expanded group, I guess, and they're delightful to read. And there was one new term, one new piece of English that came from an old friend of the Planetary Society. Talk to us about the word Tussall. Tussall. Well, it joins, it's actually not a new word.

It's been used on these Mars missions for quite a while. Martian day is called a sol because it's a different length than an Earth day. And you have to differentiate whether you're talking about a day on Mars or a day on Earth. And since days on Mars are different from days on Earth, we also need different words for to Sol or today, next to Sol or Solaro, which is tomorrow on Mars, and yester Sol or yesterday on Mars. Absolutely charming. Thank you, Emily.

It's great to talk to you again and look forward to the next time. Always a pleasure, Matt. That's Emily Lakdawalla. She is the senior editor at the Planetary Society. On now to the boss, the CEO, Bill Nye. Bill, there is almost maybe actually too much in the Tuesday edition of Space News First Up for us to be able to cover today. So let's jump in. I mean, there is just a lot going on up there off the surface of the Earth and down here getting ready to leave it.

Absolutely. You guys, the great dream that we've all held since the Cold War is for the United States, European Space Agency, ESA, and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, to work together. Wouldn't that be great? So there's a proposal to build a cislunar station. Who am I, Matt? I'm open-minded, man. But these things are very difficult to pull off. It's politics on top of politics mixed in with politics. But we do have the head of Roscosmos saying that he expects to collaborate, to cooperate with NASA and ESA. I mean, that's... It would be a wonderful thing. It would be world-changing.

It would be great to not have each space agency being responsible for the whole mission. You could spread the cost out and everybody would be able to do more. Am I being too naive or idealistic to think that if we can cooperate up there, we can cooperate down here? Yes. All right. How about China then, which is not saying it's going to collaborate on this,

buying ancient technology for a Soviet-era human lunar lander? So, you guys, if you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., second most popular museum in the world after the Louvre, in Washington, D.C., second most popular museum in the world after the Louvre. You can see the Soviet era spacesuits, airlocks, and the hardware that they were going to use to go to the moon. It doesn't look that different from the stuff that NASA built, that the U.S. built, because I guess you're solving the same physics problems. I remember the boots had, you could see the stitching of the leather soles, which sounds like, well, you couldn't use leather soles. Why not? Why not? If they're sealed up well enough, it would work fine. So I'm all for it. But what

it indicates is that the Chinese Space Administration intends to send people to the moon. And I think that's cool. It will inspire humankind the same way that the original guys did. Almost lastly, a British startup that claims it's going to be launching CubeSats into space for about a tenth of what it's been costing. Bring it on. You can do the rocket equation, so-called, where you take the natural log of the final mass divided by the initial mass. Okay. And it's big fun. And it looks like you could build a rocket, pick a number, five meters tall,

two tall people tall, and send individual or two or three CubeSats into space. It seems like a cool thing to be able to do. And I am all for it, man. That would talk about democratizing space. be able to do. And I am all for it, man. That would talk about democratizing space. And maybe we could fly LightSail 7 or something on that. It would just be fantastic. I like that. I did say almost finally, because I just think it's worth mentioning, the final catalog from NASA's Kepler mission, more than 4,000 more likely planets around our galaxy. Just you, everybody, just for me, it's just astonishing. When I was in school, when I was in engineering school, people estimated that there might be a planet around one in every hundred stars. Well, now it's apparent in order of magnitude,

10 planets around every star. So that's a factor of a thousand difference in the estimation of the likelihood of finding a planet that is habitable. And this leads you right away, at least leads me right away. If it's habitable, is there somebody habitating? Is there somebody out there with whom we could communicate? Because I'll say again, if we were to discover evidence of life elsewhere, it would change the course of human history. It would change the way everybody feels about being a living thing in the cosmos. It's an exciting time, Matt. It is an exciting time.

And it is always fun to talk to you. Almost as much fun as Bill Nye Saves the World. Congratulations on the announcement that you're going to do a second season on Netflix. We're doing 12 more. I got to find out if I'm allowed to talk about the topics, but they're very cool. I'm very excited about it. I'm going to find out by next week.

I'll find out if I'm allowed to say what they are. Oh man, it's going to be something else. I predict, and you can neither confirm nor deny, that space will be mentioned. What? Doggone it. You're psychic. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt.

That's the CEO of the Planetary Society and the host of, I mean, who else? Bill Nye Saves the World coming back soon to a Netflix box near you. We're going to go on now

to a really great conversation about the eclipse of 1878 and people who chased it, like Thomas Edison. I used to listen to David Barron's great science reporting on National Public Radio. I didn't know during those years that he had an obsession. Like so many others who have witnessed a total solar eclipse, David's heart had been captured by a moon shadow, and he was already planning to tell a story that would bring more readers under the spell. That book is now out, just in time for the Great American Eclipse of 2017, when the path of totality will cross much of the United States.

Yet it's about an eclipse of 139 years ago. David recently joined me via Skype while he was in the midst of a book tour. David, it is an honor to welcome you to Planetary Radio to talk about this book, which I absolutely love, American Eclipse, a Nation's Epic Race to catch the shadow of the moon and win the glory of the world. Welcome. Thank you, Matt. I'm thrilled to be here. It really is just that. I mean, it's not just eclipse chasers like yourself, though I guess you prefer the term umbrifile. Maybe we'll talk about that later. But this win the glory of the world, That's kind of key to the book. I mean, how did the rest of the

world, especially Western Europe, view the status of American science leading up to this big event in 1878? That's a great point you bring up. So, you know, when I started looking into the eclipse of 1878 and just decided this is a fascinating kind of adventure tale from the American West and the Gilded Age that I wanted to write about. I just started out thinking about it as a story. But the deeper I got into it, the more I realized it's symbolic of America's early rise as a scientific nation. Because as you say, back in 1878, when America had just turned 100 years old, we were basically an adolescent nation. We were becoming an industrial power, but Europe really looked down on us intellectually.

We were not thought to be very deep as a country. Europe was where culture came from. Europe was where good literature and art and music and science came from. good literature and art and music and science came from. But there was a small band of American scientists at that time who were determined to show that this democratic nation on the other side of the Atlantic could do science. And so here in 1878, a total eclipse was crossing the Wild West at a time when total eclipses were very important to science. And this was America's chance to prove itself on the global stage in terms of science. And this was America's chance to prove itself on the global stage in terms of science. And I would say they did. I mean, wouldn't you say

they were successful? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting, because on one hand, looking back at the eclipse of 1878 from our modern standpoint, you really can't say that there were any specific discoveries made during that eclipse that held up over time. There are other eclipses in history where big scientific discoveries were made. 1878, in hindsight, is not one of them. But from a societal standpoint, what it meant for America getting its infrastructure of science together and becoming a country that cared about science, that's where I think the real significance of the eclipse of 1878 shows up. Before we dig more into the book, I have to tell you how much I admire the research you conducted.

There must be about 40 pages of source notes here and illustrations that are just wonderful. I mean, I wouldn't normally describe a nonfiction book's illustrations as charming, but these really are. Yeah, I'm glad you feel that way. I mean, when I started writing the book, I wasn't thinking about illustrations, but as I was doing research, I just kept coming across these just beautiful etchings and line drawings and, you know, in some cases, sketches and paintings from that era. You know, this was the late 1800s was a real,

was a great time for illustrations when there were a lot of illustrated newspapers and magazines. And I started collecting these things. And when I was putting the manuscript together, I started to put them in and I wanted to see what my editor thought and friends who were reading the manuscript. And everyone loved the illustrations, so I just kept putting more and more in. And I specifically, even though this was an era when photography existed, of course photography was not very good. And I use very few photographs because I actually think that the etchings and the drawings just really bring alive the era much more so than the photographs. I could not agree more, but I will note that you have this series of very fine color plates in the back of the book where those source notes are. Did this book get underway at that shrine to knowledge, the Library of Congress in Washington, or is that just where you spent an awful lot of your time?

Well, all right, to back up just a minute. So I had the idea for this book 19 years ago. I've been planning this book since 1998, which is when I saw my first total solar eclipse and just became hooked. That's when I became an eclipse chaser. And as a science writer, and that's what I've done as my profession all my adult life, I decided in 1998 that I wanted to write a book about eclipse chasing. But I knew in 1998 that the time to come out with the book would be the summer of 2017, because this is when people will care. So I put the project on hold for a while, and about six years ago, I started to really look around to find a good tale. I think that the best way to educate is through stories.

I wanted to find a really good story that would enable me to teach people about what makes eclipses so fascinating and what made them so important to science. So I started to look around and it didn't take long to discover that really the best eclipse stories come from the 19th century, because that was a time when total eclipses were not just amazing natural spectacles, but they were really important to science. The European nations and the United States during that time would send these expeditions off to various parts of the world to sit in the path of totality, wait for the moon's shadow, and frantically conduct studies in two or three minutes to try to

discover what they could about particularly the sun. I started to look at various eclipses in the 19th century, 1868, that eclipse crossed India and Siam, 1870, that one went across the Mediterranean. And then I came to 1878 and I just really saw how rich it was in terms of characters and setting. And I just really saw how rich it was in terms of characters and setting. And I soon discovered that a lot of the scientists who were in the West for the eclipse of 1878, their papers still exist. And many of them left their papers to the Library of Congress. And when I went there and opened these boxes and found original letters and telegrams and train tickets and diary entries, it just all came alive to me.

And so here I was sitting in just the most unexceptional of settings, you know, sitting in the reading room of the manuscript collection at the Library of Congress, which is not the beautiful reading room that's in another building, sitting under these fluorescent lights, but opening these boxes, and I just felt transported back to 1878. Well, fortunately for the rest of us, you were able to distill that into this book that really transported me. Your great prose certainly lends to that. I mean, it really is a terrific achievement. You do have these wonderful characters in the book having this adventure in what was still very much the Old West, because that was the path of this eclipse, right? Absolutely, yeah. So what a romantic setting, right? I mean, romantic. I mean,

it was also kind of brutal and dangerous, but in terms of American history, you know, the book opens in the East, where it's the Gilded Age, where everyone feels so fancy and so modern. And so, you know, but then they have to go out to very wild territory to see the eclipse. And so I just love that juxtaposition of these folks riding in their fancy Pullman Palace cars out to the very rugged Wild West. There was real danger. I mean, there were still wars with the Indian wars, wars with Native Americans who were still being actively pushed off of lands that they had previously been promised. People were dying.

Consider it was 1876 when it was Custer's last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Lots of skirmishes going on. In fact, a couple of the eclipse expeditions were supposed to go to western Montana territory. Those ones were canceled because an Indian war was breaking out there at the time. But even elsewhere, Thomas Edison, when he was in Wyoming, that was a time when things were starting to heat up with the Ute tribe not too far from where he was. And in fact, a year later, there was quite a deadly battle and massacre that took place on the Ute reservation. Yeah, one of the characters in the book loses his life, right? That major? Yes, a couple of them did, yeah.

Major Thornburg, who helped the—he was at Fort Fred Steele in Wyoming, a frontier fort that the U.S. Army ran. The frontier soldiers helped the scientists.S. Army ran. The frontier soldiers helped the scientists during the eclipse of 1878, and it was a short time later that they were involved in this battle with the Utes, and several of them, including Major Thornburg, who had befriended the scientists, he was killed. You've already revealed one of the major characters in the book, and I bet you've already surprised a lot of people who may not have known that Thomas Edison was an eclipse chaser, at least for this one occurrence. Right. And so, again, when I get back to what really got me engaged in the eclipse of 1878, a big part of what got me hooked early on was when I learned that Thomas Edison was in the Wild West in 1878 to see a total solar eclipse. And this was a key year for Thomas Edison. He had just come out with the phonograph,

and that's what launched him from being a very successful but little-known inventor. In fact, perhaps his best-known invention up to then was something called the electric pen, which was basically a mimeograph device. But suddenly he comes out with the phonograph. He becomes a global celebrity. He heads off to Wyoming to conduct an experiment during the eclipse of 1878. He comes home and the very next day he begins work on the electric light bulb. So this is a key year for Thomas Edison.

And he, he, of course, was such a fascinating character. I mean, not only a genius at invention, but he was a genius at public relations and just a really colorful character who was being interviewed by journalists all along his way out to Wyoming and back. And I had such great fun getting to know him. Yeah, you really paid a great picture of him. And I wondered whether he was a better self-marketer or inventor. It was kind of a toss-up, I think. They went hand in hand. At the other end of the spectrum is my favorite character in the book. That was this astronomer, Mariah Mitchell, who fought against tremendous odds brought about by, well, her fellow Americans to be able to get out and enjoy and do science at this eclipse. Talk a little bit about her because she's just an amazing character in American history. Yeah, I just love Mariah Mitchell too. So Mariah Mitchell was an astronomer, and she was by far the best-known female scientist in America in the 19th century. She first came to prominence in 1847 when she was working professionally as a librarian by day but was studying the heavens at night while living on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

So she discovered a comet in 1847, and for that she received a gold medal from the king of Nantucket, Massachusetts. So she discovered a comet in 1847. And for that, she received a gold medal from the King of Denmark. And that kind of launched her to fame. By 1878, she was teaching astronomy at Vassar College, then at that point knew all women's college in Poughkeepsie, New York. And as you can imagine, this was a time, I mean, as hard as it is to be a female scientist today, multiply that by a thousand. There were so few opportunities for women to actually work in science. And in fact, you know, there was a real societal, an obvious societal bias against women going into science. And Mariah Mitchell would have none of it. And she not only did her own scientific studies, but she saw it as her personal responsibility to pave the way for the next generation of women to come along. And she

was out there publicly advocating for women to go into science. And in 1878, when dozens of men were assembling Eclipse expeditions out to the West and receiving support, financial support, logistical support from the federal government to put these expeditions together. She was left out, but she would not accept that. And so she, on her own, put together an all-female Eclipse expedition out to Colorado, to Denver, which was a scientific expedition, but it was really a lot more than that. It was a kind of political theater. It was an effort to show America what women could do in science and to wake them up. And there was a lot of press coverage of her really quite praising her for what she was doing and people realizing that women could be smart and educated and healthy and

feminine and do science. She was up against the common sense belief that women were capable of none of these things. I mean, there was a really infuriating book that shaped much of what Americans believed about women's limitations at the time, which must have just made her and her peers furious. So the book you're talking about came out in 1873. It went by the title Sex in Education. And it was written by a Harvard doctor named Edward H. Clark, who argued, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but this was taken seriously. He argued that higher education could actually ruin a girl's health.

That if a maturing girl used her brain too much, it sapped energy from other parts of her body, including her maturing reproductive organs. And therefore, college could turn young women into these masculine, sterile invalids. I mean, in hindsight, it was a ridiculous book. It was completely anecdotal. He picked these examples of girls who went to college and then got sick, and in a couple cases died, to suggest that this was because of education. So this was what Mariah Mitchell was up against. She brought along these Vassar alumni to show that they were, as I say, healthy and smart and educated and feminine. And there is this wonderful photograph I have in the color insert in my book, which shows the Vassar College Eclipse Party out on the plains of Colorado in 1878,

these women in Victorian dresses sitting beside their telescopes getting ready for the eclipse. It was not an easy trip either, right? I mean, they got caught in the middle of a railroad war. Yeah, right. So in that era, to go to travel from Poughkeepsie or anywhere in the east out to the west, you had to go from one railroad to another, and you'd make, you'd transfer along the way. And the railroads often were fighting with each other. They were competitors, and they got caught in a railroad war in Colorado. And when they ended up in Denver, unfortunately, some of their bags were caught. They were basically prisoners held behind. That included several of

Mariah Mitchell's telescope parts. So she was frantically trying to rescue her baggage in the days before the eclipse. And I want to mention also that she was not just a scientist. She was a leader of what was the suffragette movement, getting women the vote and other rights that was still in its infancy at the time. Yeah, and she ended up, she and her team ended up in Colorado at a very interesting time, because Colorado had just become a state in 1876. In 1877, there was an effort to give women the right to vote in Colorado. And many of the era's great women's rights champions, including Susan B. Anthony, came out to Colorado in 1877 to try to get women the vote. And of course, that required getting men to vote to give women the vote. And that failed. But in 1878,

there was an effort to try to jumpstart that movement once again. Here, Mariah Mitchell shows up. And in fact, the folks in Colorado who were trying to get women the vote were using her presence there, again, to try to convince men that women were smart enough, honestly, to be given that responsibility to vote. And it took a while. I think it was several decades before Colorado gave women the vote. But again, all of this was really interesting for me as I was writing the book to see that the eclipse was not just a scientific event. It really fit in many ways into the politics and the culture of the time. Certainly, Mariah Mitchell's visit to Colorado played a role in efforts to get women the vote.

Let's move on to the third member of this sort of triumvirate of major characters. And he's kind of, in more ways than one, the heavy in the picture. He thought he had had a successful trip, right? Tell us about James Craig Watson. James Craig Watson, who was a bit overweight. In fact, he went by the nickname Tubby by his students. But he was a very respected astronomer. He was the professor of astronomy and head of the observatory at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And he was known in that era as a planet hunter. And that's because he was one of the top people in the world for discovering asteroids. And asteroids back then were considered planets. They were considered, they were called minor planets, but they got names just like the major planets and finding them was a very big deal. So James Craig Watson,

he was actually kind of in competition with one other American as well as some Europeans in trying to take the lead in the asteroid hunting race. In 1878, he came out to Wyoming for the eclipse specifically to look for a planet. And it wasn't just any planet. He was looking for a planet called Vulcan, which back in that era was thought by many astronomers to exist between Mercury and the sun. And that's because Mercury's orbit was puzzling. Mercury's orbit didn't quite fit Newtonian mechanics. And the way that astronomers explained this was it seemed there must be some mass between Mercury and the sun that was tugging Mercury along. Vulcan was a hypothetical planet. If you actually look at some solar system diagrams from that era, you'll see it goes Vulcan, Mercury, Venus, Earth.

But no one had reliably seen Vulcan, which wasn't really a surprise because it's so close to the sun, you would never have it in the sky at night. And you couldn't see it in the daytime because it was lost in the sun's glare. About the only time you might catch a glimpse of Vulcan was during a total solar eclipse when the moon blocks the bright sun and you could see what's around the sun. So James Craig Watson came to Wyoming specifically to look for Vulcan, and he was kind of sure he would find it and wanted that fame that would come from discovering it. And the big news out of the eclipse of 1878 was James Craig Watson found Vulcan. Well, he was celebrated, of course, right? You document this in the book as the discoverer of not just a minor planet, but maybe a full-fledged planet like Mercury. Right. So as I say, after the eclipse, and as you mentioned, James Craig Watson is hailed right here.

An American astronomer has finally found Vulcan. Now, we know he was wrong. He could not accept there was any chance that he was wrong. He had a huge ego. And when astronomers started to doubt, like, well, maybe he really didn't see Vulcan. Maybe what he saw was a star. He was determined to restore his honor. He actually came up with this crazy scheme to prove that he'd been right and to find Vulcan even without the aid of a total eclipse. And he quite literally worked himself to death two years later at age 42 in this plan to re-find Vulcan. Well, as you say, it was not until decades later that the whole Vulcan story came to an end,

because what we know today is why is it that Mercury's orbit is so odd and doesn't fit Newtonian mechanics is because, frankly, Newton wasn't entirely right. It took Einstein to figure out that when you have an extremely massive object like the sun, it actually distorts the fabric of space. And that's what general relativity shows. And so you have to know general relativity and what it suggests about Mercury's orbit to make all the math work out and for Mercury's orbit to make sense. And it was in 1919, a few years after Einstein's theory of general relativity came out, that Einstein was proven right. And that was at an eclipse that had crossed the Atlantic. And Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer, came up with this experiment that was conducted off

the coast of Africa and also in Brazil to look at the bending of starlight around the eclipsed sun and to see if that bending matched Einstein's general relativity. And in fact, it did. So it was an eclipse in 1919 that explained Watson was wrong in 1878. There is no Vulcan and there can be no Vulcan because Mercury's orbit fits general relativity. You don't need to invent some planet closer than Mercury to the sun. David Barron, author of American Eclipse. He'll tell more tales that mix astronomy and the Wild West after the break. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, Planetary Radio listeners.

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Our mission is to give you the power to advance space science and exploration. With your support, we sponsor innovative space technologies, inspire curious minds, and advocate for our future in space. We are the Planetary Society. Join us. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. David Barron has written American Eclipse, a nation's epic race to catch the shadow of the moon and win the glory of the world. After reading the book, I told David I could imagine it as an adventurous graphic novel full of colorful characters. He agreed, but there's nothing fictional in his tale about the adventures of astronomers who ventured into the still wild American West back in 1878. These are just the three sort of lead characters in this tremendous cast of characters, really

with emphasis on the word character because they're fascinating people. And we don't have time to go into all of them, of course, but what a crowd. There is one more I'd love you to say just a couple of words about, and it's this frustrated astronomer turned weatherman named Cleveland, is it Abbey? Abbey, correct. A-B-B-E. Yeah, Cleveland Abbey, in fact, today is often referred to as the father of the National Weather Service. He began his career as an astronomer, of the National Weather Service. He began his career as an astronomer, but had little trouble getting a permanent paying job. And it was while he was the head of the Cincinnati Observatory that he got into weather forecasting. Now, weather, of course, is very important to astronomy,

because if the clouds come in, you can't see the stars. So what he devised, he got a bunch of folks elsewhere in the country to send him daily weather reports via telegraph. And then he could actually map the movement of weather systems across the country and come up with these rudimentary forecasts. And that's considered the first daily weather forecasting system in the United States. A short time later, Cleveland Abbey found himself out of a job. The Cincinnati Observatory was not well funded. But just then, the U.S. government decided to get into the weather forecasting business. And at that time, it was a branch of the U.S. Army that took on the job. And they hired Cleveland Abbey because he's the only guy who knew how to do this. And so Cleveland

Abbey was the first professional meteorologist working for what today is the Weather Bureau. In 1878, he was really a meteorologist, but he just so wanted to do astronomy. And when he knew, of course, that the eclipse was coming in 1878 and crossing the West, he wanted to be there. And he was able to convince his boss that he should be there because, after all, the eclipse was at that point all about, in terms of science, studying the sun. And the sun is the driver of weather on Earth. So he figured it's legitimate that the weather service should be studying the sun during the eclipse. And Cleveland Abbey ended up going to Colorado to witness the total eclipse from 14,000 feet up on top of Pikes Peak, Colorado, where he could have experienced an amazing view. But

gosh, he got terrible terrible terrible altitude sickness and actually had to be evacuated the night before the eclipse but he still got to see it though he was flat on his back he was an invalid but yeah i the story of cleveland abbey and the eclipse of 1878 it really i think is the most dramatic tale of someone whose life was literally in danger he had severe altitude sickness, and he didn't realize how sick he was. But the night before the eclipse, he was thrown on a stretcher and carried halfway down the mountain. So he, on July 29, 1878, the day of the eclipse, he was not on top of Pikes Peak, but he was on a shoulder of Pikes Peak at 10,000 feet,

top of Pikes Peak, but he was on a shoulder of Pikes Peak at 10,000 feet, still pretty woozy from altitude sickness. He couldn't stand up, but he had some gentlemen carry him outside, lay him down on the ground. He didn't have his best spectacles for stargazing, but he could see what was going on, and he, flat on his back, got to witness the eclipse of 1878. Absolutely fascinating, and just one of so many of these great stories in your book, American Eclipse. I'm going to go back to that fellow Edison. He actually had his heart set on testing a device that he invented. Tell us a little bit about this machine. Yeah, it's called the tazimeter. Today, we would call it an infrared detector. It was an extremely sensitive detector of heat that Edison claimed could measure differences in temperature as small as one millionth of a degree

Fahrenheit. And Edison had devised it at the request of an astronomer, Samuel Pierpont Langley, who at the time was the head of the Allegheny Observatory in Pennsylvania. Later, he went on to head the Smithsonian. Several astronomers wanted to get their hands on tazimeters for the eclipse. In the end, Edison decided he would go west and do the experiment himself. And it's actually, it's an interesting period in Edison's life because, you because – today, if you read about Edison, he's generally presented as someone who was quite adamant that he was not a scientist. He was an inventor. And in fact, he could be a little disdainful of ivory tower scientists, that they didn't really know how the world works.

They didn't get their hands dirty. They were too busy just thinking too much. But Edison in 1878 actually admired academic scientists, and he wanted their respect. And so he traveled with a bunch of academics out to Wyoming to be a scientist. He was going to use the tazimeter to study the eclipsed sun and to point it at the corona, what today we know is the sun's outer atmosphere, but back then was this mysterious halo that appeared only during a total eclipse. And he was going to use the tazimeter to see if the corona gave off not just light, but heat. And so during those three minutes of totality in Wyoming, he was frantically trying to get his his tazimeter to work. And he faced some pretty serious challenges like

a wind trying to blow down the shack he was in. Right. And so Edison, you know, here he is in the Wild West. He has that wasn't exactly elegant surroundings. So the tazimeter was extremely sensitive. Again, he claimed it could even a millionth of a degree difference in temperature would cause the needle to deflect. So first he needed to have his tazimeter nicely protected from extraneous sources of heat, as well as anything that would disturb it. So he set up his telescope in what normally was a chicken coop. And he used that to protect it. He had a telescope connected to his desimeter. But then the wind was just blowing violently and he couldn't keep everything in alignment.

And he had some of the folks in Rawlins, Wyoming, this frontier town, grab some boards and set up some temporary fencing to try to block the wind. What finally came to his rescue was the eclipse itself, because a total eclipse often will cause a change in the weather, suddenly of this drop in solar radiation coming in. And that can sometimes cause a still day to become windy or a windy day to become still. And luckily for Edison, it was the latter in this case. And just at the right moment, the wind stopped and that enabled him to conduct his experiment. And did it work? Did the tazimeter do what it was supposed to? Well, it kind of did and it kind of didn't. The tazimeter did work as a heat detector.

And during the eclipse, when Edison pointed it at the corona, it found heat, and in fact, it found a lot more heat than he was expecting, and he had set his device a little too sensitively, and the needle just flew off the scale. So first of all, the experiment itself was kind of called both a success and a failure, and it was a success that it found heat. It was a failure in that it didn't accurately measure the heat because it was too sensitive. After the eclipse, a bunch of folks wanted to get tazimeters, astronomers and others, to use the device. And Edison, being a PR pro, was out there promoting the tazimeter as this great new device. When people finally got their hands on tazimeters, they found it really was not that great a device. It worked as a heat detector, but it really didn't work as a heat measurer. It didn't really provide reproducible results. It would deflect, but then it would take a while if you took the heat away for the needle to go back down, and it was too sensitive to extraneous sources of heat. So yes, Edison found heat in the corona.

He could not really say how much heat was there. So it was an interesting experiment, but it really didn't amount to much in the long run. So successful or not, is it fair to say that Thomas Edison essentially invented the field of infrared astronomy? He certainly had the idea early on. He actually, in 1878, after the eclipse, came up with this idea that, well, you know, you could use the tazimeter to search the heavens for things that you can't see, but that actually you can detect the heat from. I mean, and that is what infrared astronomy is. And he had suggested you could do this with his tazimeter. Well, as far as I know, that never was done with the tazimeter because,

again, the tazimeter didn't really work very well. But infrared detectors later on were used that way. I don't know that his suggestion in 1878 is actually what led people to do it later on, but he was definitely ahead of his time. He had the idea before infrared astronomy was actually done. Yeah, and with the invention of the practical electric light still to come, as you said, you've talked about the enormous attention from the media, which essentially consisted of the newspapers in that day. from the media, which essentially consisted of the newspapers in that day. Other than sort of impressing the old world, Western Europe, did this eclipse and the efforts to cover it have an effect on the American people, on their attitude towards science?

Absolutely. I mean, it's hard to quantify it. But consider that, you know, before the eclipse of 1878, America really did not rally around science that much. That's not to say there was none. I mean, there were other astronomical events, in fact, including the transit of Venus in 1874 that there were expeditions sent out for, and the newspapers paid attention to it. But the eclipse of 1878, here we were having, this was America's eclipse, right? This was in our backyard and we were going to claim ownership of it. Just the amount of excitement that was generated and the way that science kind of got infused with patriotism, reading these articles about just how

much pride there was that the American public wanted our scientists to succeed. I think you have to say that it inspired a kind of new fervor around science in America that hadn't been at that level before. And just, I mean, I actually quote a preacher who, late in 1878, made the point about the eclipse of 1878, and that this was an era when most everyone was saying that all that Americans cared about was making money. You know, this was the Gilded Age and America was getting rich. We were becoming an industrial power. But this preacher in Chicago was making the point that the eclipse showed that we were

not just out for money. We were out for knowledge. We were out for higher things than money. And I have to trust what he says, that America, this was a chance to show that, yes, we wanted to be an economic power, but we also wanted to take on the world and show what we could do intellectually. And there's no doubt that we did that. Really, by the turn of the century, by 1900, we were on the global stage with Europe and soon to surpass Europe as the clear global superpower in science.

And may our attitude toward science always be so in this nation. Before I let you go, I want to talk about one more section of the book, and that is your almost second-by-second recounting of what happened during the eclipse itself. It's hard to pick a favorite section of this book because I really find all of it delightful, but this is particularly dramatic, as, of course, it should be. Part of what I loved about this story, and I had so much fun writing this book, is a total eclipse, particularly in that era, it just has this built in drama. Because here you've got folks who were anticipating, scientists that is, anticipating the eclipse for years, planning for it for months, traveling to get to it for days or weeks, setting up their equipment in the days in advance, and it all comes down to

three minutes. Well, the total eclipse is three minutes. The partial eclipse leading up to the total eclipse lasted more than an hour. But really, it did come down during totality to second by second. They had mapped out at each location precisely how many seconds they had. And at each eclipse camp, each scientific camp, someone was charged with counting the seconds so that they knew exactly how much time they had. And they practiced beforehand. And they, you know, someone knew that for the first 15 seconds of totality, they would do this. And the next 10 seconds, they do something else. And then the next next 30 seconds so it was all mapped out and it could all be ruined by a single cloud floating by at the wrong time so there was just this inherent drama and i in writing the book i kind of i did try to bring

that out and it just was natural in the storytelling that the time sort of dilates as we get to the eclipse so that the first section of my book is about 1876, and then the chapters are about a given month or a given day, and then finally I have a whole chapter that's just about the time leading up to totality, and then a full chapter that's just about those three minutes, because there's so much to describe in those three minutes. It works so well. It really is a marvelous dramatic structure, and you capture it just perfectly. And then after the eclipse, we learn what happened to most of these major players in

the book. The beat goes on. Where are you going to be on August 21st of this year? So August 21st of 2017, I will be in Jackson, Wyoming, up in the Tetons. And I, I mean, I've been planning for this eclipse since I saw my first one in 1998 and making very specific plans since three years ago. I booked my hotel in Jackson three years ago because I knew that that would be a great place to see the eclipse. I mean, really, all of Wyoming and the West has good odds of clear skies. Jackson is just beautiful. And I actually plan to be on a mountaintop. I'm going to be up at 10,000 feet on Rendezvous Peak at the Jackson Hole Mountain Ski Resort with a whole bunch of family members who are coming in to see their first total eclipse.

of family members who are coming in to see their first total eclipse. And the reason I want to be up there is because of what I learned in writing my book about what was seen from Pike's Peak. There were scientists up at 14,000 feet in Colorado to observe that eclipse. And what they saw was just breathtaking. You know, I've seen five total solar eclipses, but I've never had a good view of the moon's shadow approaching. And that's what they saw from Pike's Peak in 1878. The folks up there didn't just look up at the eclipse, they looked down and they looked out and they looked to the northwest and they could see this enormous shaft of darkness from outer space that was rushing toward them at almost 2,000 miles an hour. And they could see the distant peaks that were still in sunlight popping out of sight as this

curtain moved toward them. The way they describe it is just breathtaking. And that's what I want to see. I'm going to be up on Rendezvous Peak looking west toward Idaho, hoping the skies are clear and that I can actually see the moon's shadow as it comes in. Yeah, that was really a thrilling sequence within a pretty thrilling and fascinating story. I certainly hope that I'll have the clear skies that I bet you'll be enjoying there as I'm in the stadium with 10,000 other people in Carbondale at Southern Illinois University for my very first solar eclipse.

I can tell you, I've always wanted to see one, but it's work like yours that just has me anticipating this with the greatest of excitement. Would you, I know you've got the book there with you, if you would turn to page 238 and just read the last paragraph in American Eclipse. Sure, hold on a second. Yes. So this is the final paragraph of the epilogue. Eclipses, I find, connect the present with the past like few other natural events. For me personally, they are life milestones. Each forces me to reflect on who I was the last time I gazed at the corona. For us, collectively, as a society,

a nation, a civilization, they can have the same indelible, life-affirming effect. They afford a chance not only to grasp the majesty and power of nature, but to wonder at ourselves, who we are, and who we were, when the same shadow long ago touched this finite orb in the boundless void. Well said, David. A glorious book. I recommend it very highly. Thank you for coming on Planetary Radio to talk with us about it. And best of luck as you continue to travel the country. I hear you're in, what, Springfield, you said? Springfield, Missouri? You've caught me in Springfield, Missouri, which is just outside the path of totality.

But, of course, the path does go across Missouri. And I was in St. Louis the other day and near Carbondale, Illinois. Tomorrow I'm going to be in Kansas City. Those are all in the path of totality. And excitement is really building as well it should be. and excitement is really building as well it should be, folks who live in the path of totality, they have to understand that they have been given a gift to not have to go anywhere and to see the grandest sight in all of nature.

The next total eclipse that will cross my house in Boulder, Colorado, will be on July 22nd of the year 2772. So I have to travel to see Eclipse. Safe travels, David, and best of luck with the book and Clear Skies, too. Thank you, Matt. It really was my pleasure. We've been talking with David Barron, and he is the author, the creator of American Eclipse, a nation's epic race to catch the shadow of the moon and win the glory of the world.

It is published by LiveWrite Publishing. That's a division of WW Norton. It's available in all the usual places, and we'll put a link up to it on this week's show page that you can get to from planetary.org slash radio. David Barron, he's the award-winning author, journalist, and broadcaster who I used to listen to faithfully on national public radio and PRI's show, The World. He has been to every continent, more than 50 countries, and proudly calls himself an umbrophile. I guess you better explain that. Basically, you're an eclipse chaser, but an umbrophile? That's just a fancy word using Greek and Latin.

Lover of the shadow. But yes, I do more than anything love to stand in the shadow of the moon. Five total eclipses in his personal history so far, one more coming on August 21st of this year, and we will continue to prepare for that tremendous event that will cross North America as we speak just a couple of months from now. Right now, though, we're going to go to this week's What's Up with Bruce Betts. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society,

and he's our expert on the night sky and all the other stuff that he brings us in this segment. Welcome back. We are going to give away the new Planetary Radio t-shirt. Ooh, exciting. It is. It really is. I love this shirt. I don't have one yet.

It's that new. But it's going to be part of our grand prize package. Actually, we've talked about it and decided you're not allowed to have one. I'm sorry to be the bearer. What? I quit. I'm out of here. Tell us about the night sky.

I'm leaving. Okay. I guess we'll have to find a new editor. So we've got Jupiter in the evening sky. It's out with the pigs. So we've got Jupiter high up in the evening sky up in the south. And if you look to its 10 degrees to the left of it, there's a bright star that's noticeably bluer. That is the star Spica.

We've also got Saturn rising in the east in the early evening and setting around dawn, looking yellowish. And we've got Venus dominating the pre-dawn sky in the early evening and setting around dawn, looking yellowish, and we've got Venus dominating the pre-dawn sky in the east. We move on to this week in space history. It was 20 years ago that the NEAR spacecraft, later renamed NEAR Shoemaker, flew by the asteroid Matilda on the way to the asteroid Eros, which it would eventually orbit and even land on. Kind of a rendezvous, right? Yes, yes, yes. But 20 years ago, it was just a flyby of the asteroid Matilda giving us another look at another asteroid.

Scary how long we've been at this stuff. You mean us personally? Yeah, yeah, you and me. Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. All right, we move on to random space fact. How melodious. About 80% of the Venusian surface, Venus' surface, is covered by smooth volcanic plains. But there are two highlands that are sometimes called continents that make up the rest of the surface area.

One's in the northern hemisphere, one just south of the equator. That's the place to build the hotel, so you get the view. Exactly. And if, you know, oceans ever fill in in the searing hot climate, you'll have an ocean view. I actually own some property there, Matt. We'd be happy to sell to you for a reasonable price. Oh, let's talk. All right, afterwards, we'll talk.

Oceans of molten lead. Beautiful. Be so shiny. I love those waves. Surf's up. All right. We move on to the trivia contest. I ask you what class or group of meteorites matches the average composition of samples returned from the asteroid Itokawa by the Japanese Hayabusa mission. How did we do, Matt? You intimidated people with this, and it wasn't that hard. We had a whole bunch of people who came up with it, including the person who I think is our winner and a first-time winner at that,

William Lee Calve of Martinez, Georgia. He said the answer was low total iron, low metal chondrites, otherwise known as LL chondrites. Yes, it's also going to be my rapper name. LL chondrites. Yes, LL chondrite is just one particular version of what are called ordinary chondrites. They make up the majority. They're kind of rocky things that make up the majority of the meteorite population. Well, congratulations, William. You are the latest winner of a

200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. You may be, who knows, the last winner of the second-generation Planetary Radio t-shirt, and we threw in a Planetary Radio sticker. Those old t-shirts and we threw in a planetary radio sticker those old t-shirts are going to really go up in value i know especially the ones that we sign that's what our winner had to say but we we got our usual collection of funny responses from uh well people like erica o'day he says i love this. Looks like someone left it out in the rain. I know what he means. Yeah, it's got a weird

surface texture. Yeah, I suppose it wasn't actually rain. Unlikely, right? Very unlikely. Just as unlikely as those ocean, liquid water oceans on present-day Venus. Mel Powell, Sherman Oaks, California. What's a chondrite got to do to be considered

extraordinary? That's a little jokerite got to do to be considered extraordinary? That's a little joke rather than an ordinary chondrite. Never mind. It usually comes down to the dancing and singing portion. Oh, it's one of those talent shows, talent reality shows. It is. It's called American Asteroid. Yeah. Martin Hajoski in Houston, Texas, he says, Like its Earthbound namesake, L.L. Bean, L.L. Condrite might possibly be well-known in the Maine Asteroid Belt someday as a purveyor of fine, stony-washed genes. In the Maine Asteroid Belt?

Yeah, that's what he said. Maine with an E? No, no. what he said. Main with an E? No, no. L-L-B, never mind. Nice try. But you're right, you're right. That is where they're based, isn't it? Finally, this from Perry Metzger in New York, New York.

My favorite group of asteroids remains the polyisoprene or rubber asteroids. Yeah, they have very similar sized meteorites that pervade our existence. All right, we're ready to move on. I talked to you about Venus's surface. You might have seen it coming. What are the names of Venus's two large highlands areas, sometimes called continents?

What are their names? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You have got until Wednesday, June 28, at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. You might be the very first person to win the gorgeous new Planetary Radio t-shirt, which comes to us from Chop Shop. Thomas Romer runs this place.

We've done stuff with them in the past, posters. And now there is an entire Planetary Society store at chopshopstore.com, which is how you can get there. We'll put the direct link up on the show page at planetary.org slash radio. But it's Chop Shop. The Planetary Society t-shirt is, if anything, I hate to admit it, even more gorgeous than the Planetary Radio t-shirt. And there's some other cool stuff there. Yeah, you can buy a Planetary Radio t-shirt now for

the first time ever. That's totally cool. Hey, everybody go out there, look up the night sky and think about what shirts would look like named after other letters besides T. Thank you, and good night. I get it. You mean like J-shirts? Yeah, U-shirts. Or B-shirts. X-shirts. There's a whole new trend that we could start here. I like it. I like it. We're going into business, you and me. That's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science, Technology, and Product Merchandising for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its adventurous members.

Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies!